


Something Wicked This Way Comes

by KirscheLeibling



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), F/M, Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity Gems, M/M, More like Instead of lazily skipping two years I'm showing all the nitty gritty, No character bashing, Not A Fix-It, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Slow Burn, character bias, like super slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 18:54:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirscheLeibling/pseuds/KirscheLeibling
Summary: "You can't just wave a hand over the troubleyou causedand try to use that as-asproofyou were in the right!" Tony shouts frantically. Everyone in the room stops. "That's not how consequences work--youdecided you knew better, and thentheydecided you knew better, too! And you know who got stuck with that mess you left behind?" Tony laughs, and spreads his arms open to motion at the people behind him, on their feet, some with their hands on Tony, trying to calm him. "The Avengers, that's who."Steve doesn't answer. Instead, he looks at the tightened lips of those that followed him, and thinks back to where it all went wrong. Maybe when even Natasha looked at him the way they used to look at the Hulk-- like something that couldn't be stopped. Maybe when Zola laughed at him from his immortal illusion. Maybe when he took a look at that first folder, their first mission. "I may have made a few mistakes," Steve concedes, shoulders pulling back as he meets Tony's eyes, "but no more running. No more lies, no more secrets. We're here to fight this--together."





	1. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try not to bash on any characters, but do note the character bias tag because although I'm trying to not do it, some of the characters will have an inherent bias. I'm trying to realistically lead up to Infinity Wars without the lazy excuse of skipping two whole-ass years (lmao did that bother anyone else??). Of course I'm trying to lead up to Infinity Wars, so some elements may be familiar to y'all. 
> 
> Tags will be updated as they go, and yes that relationship tag is slow burn. Also, this is compliant to all movies except, you know, actual Avengers: Infinity Wars Part I.

“What you wanted,” a voice booms from somewhere in the main living room, “was to atone for your sins. And look at the mess you’ve made now; ‘Team Cap’ is out of the States, all but _fugitives_ from the law, and the Avengers are scattered. The country is divided. Shoot, the whole _world_ , for all that matters to you. What was it that I told you the first time, Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark—"

“—not recommended.” Pepper says, turning on the lights. Her voice, as toneless as it is, betrays the soft pudginess and redness beneath her eyes. Nick Fury looks shocked for the slightest of seconds before his features revert to plain disgruntlement. “And for a dead man, I must wonder how you came to be here, Ex-Director Fury.” Pepper tilts her head to the side and refuses to walk past the threshold of the door.

“It seemed to me an appropriate location for Stark to return to, considering the Compound.” Fury admits, leaning back into the plush chair. “Although I am surprised to find you instead, Miss Potts.”

"You wouldn’t be," Pepper starts, glare solidifying into something a little more sardonic and a little less kill-on-sight, "if you'd check your sources, but something tells me that's exactly what you're here about. Unfortunately, or at least fortunately enough for _you_ , I am the only one here so..." The unspoken _you can leave now_ does not go unnoticed. Unperturbed, Fury raises a solitary eye brow.

"It seems _Mr. Stark_ has rubbed off on you in more way than one," he says, and Pepper--

"I am _not_ one of your little misfit miscreants," Pepper grinds out, pushing off the doorway and stalking closer to the aloof ex-director. "I am _not_ Natalie Rushman, or Natalia Romanova, or whatever other name your little _Black Widow_ has taken. I am not...." She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. Fury remains silent, observing. "I am not here for your entertainment or to be part of your little shit-show."

"I meant no--"

Pepper raises her hand and Fury's words die to the silence it raises with it. "Don't you _fucking_ dare," Pepper starts, "say 'no offense' as if you didn't imply what you just did. As if you, yourself, haven't broken a few laws being here, _Ex-Director Fury._ This is a game you will always lose." Pepper closes her eyes once more, and Fury takes the time to observe. Deliberate. Calculate. She looks like Tony, actually, a bit, like she's been running on high performance and hasn't been putting in the support for it. Slightly pale, a little sweaty. Crying, definitely. Not defeated, though, with the strong set of her shoulders and her eyes remaining fierce.

She reminds him of that time, years ago, when the only solution had been to inject Stark and lock him under house arrest with some of Howard Stark's old things.

"Here, in this home," Pepper continues, "you have no footholds. You have no leverage. I am not Tony Stark. I am not... not a kidnapped man. Not a weapons maker. I am not a _dying man_ and you do not hold a cure. The answers. I am not a killer nor a spy. I have nothing to give you and you have nothing to give _me_. So how about you get straight to the point and _I_ get to decide whether you walk out of here a ghost or you officially become one."

Fury takes a second to swallow the threat. Pepper Potts, although intimidating in her own right, is no assassin, as she had said. But there was something in her words, something tinged with a different flavor of manic, that made him hesitate.

If push came to shove, he definitely knew he would be able to subdue her and leave. It seemed like Stark's AI wasn't even installed in the building yet. Something told him, still, whispering behind his reasonings, that he was playing a poker game with only three cards in his hand.

Like Pepper knew something he didn't.

He hadn't had that feeling since... since project Insight.

_Since the snakes had made a home in your home. 'Till you couldn't see the truth until it was shooting you in the chest, repeatedly._

"There is a bigger threat," he says at last, weighting the pros and cons of letting a civilian—albeit a civilian very well in the know—about his information. Not all, though. "It's coming soon. One of the mechanisms Stark and Banner made on the original Helicarrier has pinged a few locations of energy signals closely related to the Tesseract. According to the readings, a few more of these... otherworldly items have appeared on earth on three separate occasions."

"You think someone is going to read the signatures and follow them here," Pepper surmises after a brief pause. Fury sighs.

"It is reasonable to believe that the same person responsible for Loki's attack, the Sponsor, so to speak, will arrive to pick up his weapons himself. When the middle man becomes too much of a hassle, well," Fury shrugs, "sometimes a man has to get his hands dirty himself to finish the job."

"So is that what this is?" Pepper asks at last, her gaze just this side of sharp, too keen to be ignorant of... of what? It irks Fury, not knowing.

She was right. He has no leverage, all he has is--

"Is this you, getting your hands dirty?" Pepper clarifies, breaking Fury from his impending reverie. "Because, I gotta say, its maybe four of five years a little too late for you to start taking _personal_ action, _ex-director_.

"I should think that finding a man whose mind is still in the midst of war should warrant a personal touch. Maybe some help, but, I'm not the failed Director of a clandestine agency so _what would I know_ about the adverse effects that World War II _alone_ had on the brains of soldiers. I'm not the man that sought out mentally unstable assassins and spies and tried to keep them to a single-minded loyalty. I'm not the man whose agency was infiltrated by their worse enemies. Neither am I the man that would allow dangerous and completely insufficiently researched agents remain on the field. I'm not the man that figured a couple hundred dead agents meant nothing as long as the truth would be revealed.

"Actually, I don’t think you even know who I am," Pepper snorts, taking a delicate seat on the coffee table in front of Fury. "I'm the woman that kept Tony Stark alive while he went out to save _actual_ SHIELD agents that had no idea their life and the lives of their families were in danger because of the SHIELD information dump. I'm the one that read each of those armors Ultron converted the coordinates for the Agents, hoping I wouldn't find their dead corpses. Hoping I wouldn't find their _entire families slain_."

_How many, Fury had asked, and Maria... Maria doesn't look at him. She stays silent for a few minutes, drinks from her coffee before finally speaking._

_Too many, she says, eyes still off in the distant, empty sky. Do you even care enough for final numbers?_

_He hadn't. She told him, at least eighty-seven percent. She got up, dropped her coffee into the trash bin along the park's jogging route, and left._

_Fury remained, passive and calculating on the park bench._

_"_ But I'm not the one you want to talk to," Pepper chirps up, her demeanor shifting into professionality. "You wish to speak to Mr. Stark. Come," she says, standing up and turning her back without noting if fury was really following her orders.

"You... are taking me to Stark," Fury clarifies, confused.

"Yes," Pepper answers simply, and continues to walk with the clear intention of having Fury follow her. Fury, both a little amazed and worried at the sudden changes in demeanor, follows silently, knowing that no immediate threat follows.

The car ride to whatever undisclosed location throws him a bit, too. With the Compound under official renovations and falling more into UN territory than Stark's own, Fury busies himself with what may be afoot, and thinking ahead about what is to come.

At least, he generally would be if he could get what Pepper Potts said out of his head.

_How many did they get to? How... how many were too late to save?_

He gives Pepper a curious glance. She's sitting next to him, any uncomfortableness masked by the amount of annoyed tapping she's doing on her StarkTablet. She looks bothered, stressed, and a little undone, if he is to be reasonable, but she had herded him into the inconspicuous Honda around the corner. He tries to wrap his head around the idea that, still recovering from the horrors of extremis, this one woman still went out of her comfort to help. To save others, whether she approved of Stark’s own heroics.

"And what is with the need for secrecy," he had asked as he eyeballed the civilian car.

"You wanted to see Tony," Pepper had said, "and although I don't care about your need to be another underground shadow, a Limo seemed to be a little more... standing out where we are going, and I don't want the media to smell this quite yet, not when--" and she had paused, swallowed, and moved on as if she hadn't stopped at all, "not when we're not ready with a response."

And that had been that. The driver looked _especially_ unhappy to be carting around Fury of all people, but when Pepper had nodded her head he had dipped his in response and they were off.

When they dipped down into a parking structure, Fury finally spoke.

"So, Miss Potts, where is Stark?" He was going to follow with a snarky remark when, quite unexpectedly, Pepper responded.

"Fourth floor. Down the hall. Is... is this place not familiar to you?" She opened her door as the car came to a stop and Fury looked around, hoping to get a clue, but nothing stood out of his mind until they walked to the elevators.

The doors opened and--

"-- _Agent 13, this is your new home for the next few weeks. Keep an eye on him. I want daily reports on anything you see or hear. If he so much as sneezes, you report it. Anything he says--"_

_"I report it. I know this song and dance, Fury," Sharon says, pressing the 4 on the elevator keys. "But isn't it... you know... a little…?"_

_"Agent Carter, your mission is simple. If you cannot keep an eye on the Captain, we can always assign another agent”_

_He hadn’t meant that. He knew, at one point or another, the jig would be up and any other agent would probably be hurt. Or ousted publicly. While Agent 13 was not the most well trained in information gathering and intelligence, she was one of the best at blending in. She shrugged and walked forward as the doors dinged open._

_And that was that._

\-- The entire floor had been changed. Where at least four single apartments filled the entire floor, all the walls but one at the far end had been stripped down to their support columns and bare wirings, plastic covering as much of the walls, ceilings, and floor as possible.

 _They needed everything sterile_ , Fury thinks, trying to absorb all the information he can as quickly as possible. He doesn't understand how the edifice—and the people living in the building, for sure—don't look... different. Perhaps some stealthy tech on the windows, make it look like all the other apartments despite the darkening by the plastic, and still.

Still. No Tony.

But this isn't what he's expecting, to be honest, and being caught blindsided by a lack of information is starting to grate on him.

"How much do you know?" Pepper asks, barely stepping out of the elevator. It seemed they had been both caught up in their thoughts and hadn't moved since. Fury follows her slow steps, cautious of his next few words. He makes notes of the eerie manequins framing the wall, various limbs traded from their pale plastic into artificial metal; here, this one with braces wound around an arm, here around a leg. There, in a corner, a metal spine aligns the back of a mannequin, headless and facing the corner.

"I understand that Stark returned to the United States sans Rogers or his friend. I also know, however, that Ross didn't arrest him even after breaking the Accords to go get them—odd, considering Ross's penchant for punishment and blackmail. Then, changes and amendments started getting pushed through, miraculously, though Stark himself didn't deliver them personally they seem to have stemmed from the man himself."

Safe to show his cards, considering he doesn't know the game anyway. Pepper hums noncommittally. He waits, a few seconds, to see if she has anything to add or correct before continuing.

“There was a brief… not summary, to be clear, but a brief message from Romanov asking to check in on Stark. That there was something he said before she left—”

 _"_ _T'Challa told Ross what you did, so... they're coming for you"_

“ _I’m not the one that needs to watch their back”_

"--may have tipped her off that something was amiss. She said she thinks she saw something coming his way. Something bad."

"Is that all your Agent told you?" Pepper inquires. She seems less sardonic, more curious now. Fury shrugs.

"I wasn't exactly given a full debrief as she was on her way out. She did hint that Stark's life may have been in some kind of danger from Ross and alluded to some kind of blackmail or the likes that the man could be holding against Stark to make him complacent. I do admit that, although it would be hard to stick something serious on the man, there is quite a lot that _can_ be used."

Pepper tries to snort and makes an odd sound at the back of her throat somewhere between the _a-hem_ of clearing a throat and a sound of befuddlement. She waves away Fury and actually clears her throat before starting.

"Perhaps you should have kept your agent for more than a SparkNotes summary." Pepper criticizes. "And learn to train your agents in some kind of cryptic-speak. Is there an international Spy-Lingo?" She pauses. "Maybe throw in some psychology in there, the Behavioral Sciences are really moving government agencies and law enforcement forward into the future."

"Perhaps this is no longer the moment for snark and vagueness," Fury says softly, "I'm here to check in on Stark, to see what kind of dirt Romanov was implying that could be important enough to cause Stark to get into bed with the likes of Ross."

They've gotten to the only wall still left standing. Fury hears it, then, the sound of machines slowly beeping. The whirr of electric lungs. The smell of sterilized air is stronger, more pungent. He has a suspicion, now, but the distance between Point A and Point B is a long one, and he needs the information before he can surrender to his gut instinct.

"So you started with _that?"_ Pepper huffs, "with, what was it, a taunt? 'Tony Stark not recommended'." She rolls her eyes. "You're actually lucky I have directives in case you did appear. Otherwise, had it been up to me..."

Fury knows. Pepper would have just walked away, protected by Stark's gadgets and computers.

"Let me clarify some points for you, _Ex-Director,"_ Pepper starts, voice lower. They have not moved past the wall, instead they speak just beyond the threshold. Just beyond what Fury wants to know and fears he does already. "There was no blackmail; your issue is in seeing every Avenger as your little SHIELD agents: no morality, no conscious, and ready to obey orders. Tony? For all the crap SHIELD and the US Government has thrown at him, is _a civilian_. Your first mistake, the same mistake the people who were once called _Avengers_ made, was to forget that when Tony understands something is wrong, he acts to fix it.

"This is the man that singlehandedly began to dismantle the groups Stane had been selling weapons to. The man that broke several laws to bring weapons with his name, his _father's_ name, away from more dangerous hands because he knew they were being used illegally, being _sold_ illegally. Weapons manufacturing is a morally ambiguous market; a market that, Tony realized, did more harm than good. He checked himself, his own company, and took all those weapons out of everyone's hands.

"You forgot about that," Pepper says, weary. "The others, they forgot about that. Maria Hill didn't. The SHIELD agents working security and in the private sector with all new identities didn't, either. Somehow, everyone's moral compass went out of whack and began to point 'Steve Rogers', and everything else outside was forgotten." Pepper looks less angry and simply world-worn. She deflates, just a bit, before taking those last few steps forward. Fury follows, silent.

" _This_ , I hope, is what Natasha was trying to warn you about," Pepper says, motioning with a single, shaky arm at the set-up. "Not Tony. What would happen to Tony if he continued to try to stop your Golden Boy."

The electrocardiogram is almost muted in the rush of blood in Fury's ears. It seems slow but steady, producing a beat from small electrode attachments on Tony's body. He seems paler than before, and Fury can't help but compare the pale, clammy memory of the poisoned man with the image of him at ease on the gurney. Tony's chest is wrapped in a crisp bandage slightly rusted with blood over his clavicle. The machines around, Fury realizes, are keeping the man nourished and hydrated. He wonders how long Tony has been here, forced to live. Forced back into another medical emergency.

Pepper takes a deep, shuddering breath. "He went in as a friend, you see.." Pepper trails.

And Fury can see it all. Can see where it went wrong, that Natasha had to know something that only Steve would know, and he had known, and... something happened, then, something with the death of Howard and Maria Stark thrown in the mix. And then violence, a fight. Something Natasha tried to warn Tony about and— _Goddammit,_ Fury had taken to be a warning _about_ Tony, and not one _for_.

Watch your back, she had told him, because she was a friend, or as much as she could be, and had seen what Steve would do for the Winter Soldier. What Steve would do for a modicum of the past, for whatever part of _James Buchannan Barnes_ he could salvage.

And there is Tony, with a light glow emanating from beyond the blood-soaked bandages. He follows his train of thought from the injuries, the bruises in mid-healing, the lacerations and scrapes, the finger tips also wrapped carefully in bandages. Stark hadn't returned with either super soldier. He had gone out to them, though. Fury knew this, had seen the strangely looped minutes from The Raft, had confirmation of Zemo's arrest in Siberia. Had the changes and amendments been pre-planned, not requiring of Stark's actual _presence?_ Had there simply been... enough of the man present in the workings that the UN—127 countries, too now, simply not noticed the physical absence?

"Tony had planned for the changes," Pepper starts and Fury worries that his face is too easily read, and by another _civilian_ no less, but Pepper isn't even looking at him. Her hand is braced on the rail of Tony's bed, her eyes stuck to Tony's slack expression. "But, maybe a day after his return, after putting off Ross for another twenty-four hours, he collapsed. Hadn't really been to medical, considering..."

_"I am here as a friend," Tony says, hands up in the universal sign of surrender, "Truce?"_

"They found the extent of his injuries." Pepper motions at the chart, scribbled with three different writing styles. "Tony was conscious when they did the run down. Somehow, it came back to this: the arc reactor. Something about… his sternum being crushed. Pressing down too hard on his heart, his lungs. The scarring was… it was his choice, in the end, but less of a choice. More or less, Tony’s choice came down to dying slowly, continuously, or reverting back to the technology that had been keeping him alive.”

Fury looks over the chart, eying the symptoms Tony had listed while conscious. Looks over the medical notes: small hairline fractures, splints of false sternum, arm pain and numbness. Eying some of the small notes, Fury sees that someone had made some footnotes on their own: nightmares. Paranoia. Anxiety attacks. Feeling of being watched paired with misremembered events. Trouble keeping thoughts in line. Forgetting what he was saying as he spoke and moving onto tangents without noticing. Confusion.

He wonders now, and surprisingly for the first time, if he should have forced a full report out of Romanov. Something about the entire situation felt... oddly edged. He heard about Zemo, a bit, about the framing of the bombing in Vienna.

“He’d been working on a new suit before this whole mess. God knows Rhodey—” Pepper’s voice cracks, “—he and I thought it would be a good time to step back. Maybe stay in the politics, if he really had to, because he has his own health to think about, his own people… it’s what’s keeping him alive.”

Fury watches the steady rise and fall of Tony’s chest. Lets the sounds of machines around them fill in the silence, and understands, once more, why it is called ‘life support’.

“You didn’t show me for nothing, Miss Potts,” He says at last, mind wrapping around her last sentence. Not extremis, then, but something along the lines. Something that would make him a danger to outside forces, to the Accords, perhaps. “What do you want, in return?”

Still facing Tony, hands clenched tightly on the railings, she speaks: “I want you to tell no one about the suit. Not that I’m going to be forthcoming with any more details, of course. You’re a ghost. Anyone in your network hears that Tony is healthy and working on making the accords into something livable for other heroes, for others. Staunch any evidence on the contrary. Someone underground starts whispering that Tony was hurt and left for dead, let alone by _your_ Captain?” Pepper scoffs, pulls back her shoulders. Here, now, her voice does not waver. She’s returning to her persona, hardening her skin.

Fury commends her. He’s watched agents fall apart and fail to put themselves back together again.

“You want me to work… damage control, in the intelligence network?” He clarifies. “I don’t have a very far reach as I did before.”

“Then you grab whoever is nearest to you,” Pepper says slowly, “and you beat it into their heads so nicely they can’t help but spread the word. Tony will be taking an… administrative role, for a while, in order to stop rumors of his new suit from getting out too fast. We need to get a hold of the narrative while we can and rewrite the script entirely. Of course, your merry band of idiots made that a whole lot harder than it _should_ have if you’d been a better handler.”

Fury takes the barb and thinks about what he’s going to set off to do. As someone who works with information and barters in secrets, this may be a tough sell.

However, as a _dead_ man in the intelligence world, well. He may have something to work with.

“I can do that,” Fury agrees, turning around. He looks at the limbs, the headless mannequins. Even without heads, he feels ominously watched. Judged. “Anything else I should keep my eye on?”

Pepper turns around and together, with Fury leading, they begin to walk towards the exit. She doesn’t answer him for the longest time, waiting until they are descending in the elevator to respond.

“All that information, about the energy signatures,” she starts, “we’ve been keeping a tab on that. If you could—” no longer demanding, their original bargain already fulfilled. This is asking for a favor, something Fury knows Tony wouldn’t take lightly. “There is. Something, something coming, that Tony’s been… trying to keep ahead of. Something he saw—”

_The fleet seemed to be some kind of mind-hive operation. The Chitauri were not a species of war, but a species designed for war. Weapons, as a race. As it stands, the energy of the Tesseract was found in the beings known as Clint Barton, Dr. Erik Selvig, Command Operator Lt. Erik Hoeffer, Officer Jorge Hernando Sandoval, and Loki Lauffeyson of Asgard. As chief witness and writer of this Report, I Tony Stark admit to this as the truth in all sense. My final report concludes that The Chitauri were not behind the attack, but simply the tool, a weapon, to be used against Earth. This only leaves a mysterious sponsor, so to speak, unnamed and unknown._

He had written it all out, neatly and nicely in a post-mission report. Increased anxiety, returned trauma. Something about a species made to be weapons, which is how they were defeated: not meant to think individually, each alien was bred as a weapon. Who had been at the other end of the barrel?

Pepper had still been speaking as Fury thought back to that mission report, filed and forgotten. Probably somewhere in the internet, if Stark hadn’t gotten it scrubbed yet. “…why we need this to work. Those idiots may not listen to a coalition of countries, and probably think that the world will need them again as a way to clean their slate, so to speak. But that’s not how international laws work, the Sokovia Accords _will_ remain. And now, because of their antics, the world has tightened it’s hold on the powered-population.”

Fury agrees. Nothing makes people scared than being scared shitless by those sworn to protect them suddenly accepting _them_ as collateral damage. They’re lucky for the amount of leeway they have been allotted so far since their departure.

He doubts Natasha will be on her way to see Steve Rogers for now. She has a good head on her shoulders, and with any luck Rogers will at least wait for the initial heat to die down before doing something monumentally _stupid_.

The elevator has stopped for the last part of Pepper’s request. Pepper has stepped out, not looking at Fury. “The world will need everyone, but it will need people who truly care about them, and not just their mission. If something that cataclysmic happens again, we’re going to need police. We’re going to need the general population to hear us and _listen._ ”


	2. It's a Good Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda dreams. The team plans now that they're out of the Raft and into the frying pan. Natasha gets some answers and finds something to do. Maybe it's an excuse or maybe it isn't--maybe something big happened in St. Charles, Missouri. She just... she needs to know before she continues forward.

 

Wanda dreams restlessly. She can feel the spit of the seats pressing into her side from where she lays over two of them in a fetal position, of sorts, with her knees tucked into her chest and one arm bent to pillow her head as the other holds onto the next seat over. She can hear everyone's voice in the cockpit and the low hum of the Quinjet beneath it all. 

She sees the scepter. In her mind, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker is whispering in her ear words she cannot hear but feels. The scepter glows ominously. The Hydra Agent that was sitting across from her at the table looks startled. He speaks to her, too, shouts that she recognizes but can't hear. He looks at Strucker, and Strucker speaks to him in a language Wanda doesn't understand. The Agent, angry but mollified, sits once more although each angle of his strained body screams tension. Wanda wipes the tears from her eyes as Strucker motions with his hand at the Agent once more. He moves back, back, and Wanda notes distantly that with the scepter activated somehow from a distance she can still feel the extra presence in the room. 

The door shuts behind Strucker. She remembers the word PEACE written in his blood across the wall where Ultron himself bashed his face in. Somewhere in the Quinjet, someone is walking towards her. In her mind, the soldier is sitting at the ready across the table from her. She starts by seeing into his mind-- gently prodding his thoughts, plucking from deep within the language he speaks, using his own knowledge as her own. 

The soldier flinches.  _Again_ , Strucker instructs from the intercom. The Scepter glows as Wanda tries to find more information, tries to dig deeper.

She is blinded by blue-white light and a heat that sets her mind on fire. They are shaking her now, here, on the Quinjet, and when she opens her eyes in her dream the man is screaming a silent supplication to the concrete, eyes almost impossibly wide. His skin begins to tear from his body and turn to ash around him, revealing the lean lines of his muscle, fatty tissues and tendons. She screams with him, horrified, and the soldier begins to reach for her even as his muscles begin to drip away to bone, and the bones are decaying with him.

 _No, no--Please!_ Wanda shouts and a cloud of scarlet-red mist begins to form, begins to condense before her eyes. The Scepter begins to light up in response, and Strucker speaks once more into the room  _Wanda, Wanda... --_

"Wanda!" Clint says, and Wanda groans as she sits up, rubbing the ache in her temples with two fingers. She sits up to take up a single seat and keeps her eyes closed as she waits for the nausea to recede. Clint takes her movement as some sort of sign, maybe, and continues. "We're going on auto for a few, we're gonna hash out a game plan. Thought you might want to be up for this." 

Wanda nods and moves the hand not currently rubbing her head to her neck. Clint stands nearby for a few more seconds before he clears his throat for the young woman's attention. Wanda finally deigns to open her eyes and something about Clint's face--no, not his face,  _his eyes_ , makes her stomach churn once more. 

They look almost ice-blue. In her mind, she hears Strucker's last words and can almost imagine them on Clint's tongue something like  _I am here, I'm still here, Wanda, I will always_ \--

Clint blinks, looks worried. His eyes are normal. Wanda lets out a breath, and then gives him a hesitant, watery smile. "Sorry," she says raspily, "just getting lost in thought. Is there something else?"

"I guess," Clint starts, and he averts his eyes as he continues, "I just wanted to see how you were holding up, after all that." Clint flaps his hand up and down, in the general direction they came from. Wanda’s smile becomes a little more real.

“It is not as unfamiliar as I would have hoped,” she says, casting her gaze downwards. “When Pietro and I were starting to train our powers, it was deemed easier to deal with us in smaller rooms.” They were basically cells, to be frank, but basically. They had been deemed unstable. Pietro couldn’t even stay still without vibrating.

“It’s that _fucking_ Stark,” Clint hisses and Wanda startles for a moment, catching the cold blue for a second before it went away with a blink. _Still out of it,_ she thinks, as Clint continues. “Must be nice to have such a low price for your soul, I guess.”

Wanda wants to comment that she meant the Raft, that being left at the Compound had been little more than house arrest, maybe, and although she would have liked the choice she couldn’t personally compare the two. But Clint is walking away already, face neutral after the viciousness it displayed not two seconds earlier. She feels cold, suddenly, and the headache returns with a strong sense of unease.

“C’mon,” Clint says, walking towards Sam and Scott huddled together in front of Steve’s hunched from towards the front of the Quinjet. Wanda follows silently, still not quite all-there.

“—akanda, I told you,” Steve says with a heavy sigh, slumped forward with his elbows braced on his knees. Sam throws his hands up in frustration and turns around. Scott looks thoughtful as he looks between the two. Wanda wonders just how in the world she slept through whatever got them to this point. Scott spares her a glance before he looks back at Steve with a growing look of wonder on his face.

“Sokovia,” he says slowly, “we can head to Sokovia.” There’s a stunned silence that reigns, although Wanda might feel like it’s just a personal feeling. “What?” Scott asks, looking at everyone. “Look, although there have been efforts to rebuild, you can’t rebuild a _whole damn country_ in just a year and a few scant weeks. I think the last report I even heard of had it at something like thirty-five percent habitable, and that was with Stark, _Pym—_ let me tell you, I _met_ Hank Pym okay, so I can tell you how much of a big deal that is—and the random slew of _other governments aiding them_.”

The silence returns. Wanda, mind blank, forehead pinched, tries to focus beyond the throbbing of her head. Sam has turned around, and Clint, although looking bothered, has a considering tilt to his head, to the slant of his mouth.

Steve’s head has been bowed since he last spoke. Wanda vaguely wonders why Wakanda is off limits, and then looks for Steve’s friend before the headache becomes too much and she needs to shut her eyes.

“I think,” Clint finally speaks up, and Wanda feels like his voice sounds like nails scratching across a chalk board – _white board, she sees it, and a woman that smiles and a voice that calls out Magda! Magda! Her hair was bouncy and curled and something scraping against glass, that sound that sound that sound—_

“—idea, really. Just gotta change out of these get-ups, lay low for a bit. There’s a chance Stark will still be after us, or Ross, and although they are the reason why the Accords are there in the first place, well, no one would really look for us there. At least for now, so we can regroup enough and figure out what we’ll do next.” Clint surmises. Scott looks at Clint for a brief second, his mouth shutting as if he was _going_ to speak but then got interrupted mid thought.

“Okay, one, those laws were called the Anti-Hydra Initiatives, the Treatise of New York, the London Agreements—”

“What does the name have to do with anything, man—” Sam starts, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at Clint who returns the gesture with a shrug.

“—I’m _just_ saying,” Scott retorts, “That those things were totally around before, and it’s the scale of Sokovia that gave it the name, alright, and _second_ ,” Scott emphasizes as Sam tries to get a reply in, “ _SECOND._ What the hell do you mean ‘figure out what we’ll do next’ because I have parole, you know, and a daughter.” Sam relents and releases a sound somewhere between a question mark and an exclamation. He sounds pained.

Wanda looks at Scott through her haze. She actually hadn’t known that about the other man. Had only known that he suited up when Steve asked, so she had trusted him to watch her back. Actually, she hadn’t known that about the Accords, either.

She had been caught in the nightmares for as long as she’d been out of the Raft. Even then, even now, she could feel the fuzziness in her mind trying to reclaim her into fitful rest.

“I have a family too, you idiot,” Clint says, and Scott shrugs because _another thing they didn’t know about each other_. Wanda doesn’t wait around to hear their next exchange, mind looping through the thought of family. She wonders why her mind strays from Pietro into a shorter cut of shocking white hair. A jaw squared with age, and that same name repeating over the pain of Pietro leaving her.

Magda. Magda. Family.

“I am fine with whatever,” Wanda says breathlessly, “I am going back.”

Sam watches as Wanda retreats, keeping note of her uneven wobble He spares Steve a glance—the man hasn’t raised his head, the only reaction he’d shown so far that he is even listening is the growing tenseness of his shoulders as everyone continued to speak.

“Alright. We land in Sokovia,” Sam raises both hands to stop Scott and Clint from protesting, “and we lay low. Give it a week, guys, you were both going up against a _newly ratified_ set of laws, y’all _left your families_ so don’t act like you didn’t know there would be some time away. Now, I’m gonna need Clint to take us there, and when we get there, _Steve_ here is going to catch us all up on the rundown since we’ve been in the Raft. Because, Steve, I get you, but we need to know what has happened with Barnes and we need more than just ‘Wakanda is off limits because T’Challa says so’ as a reason because we fought by your side to protect your friend and we want to know why he ain’t here anymore.”

Steve only grunts and nods, still facing down. Sam sighs, turns and sits across from Steve as Scott shrugs and finds a seat to curl up on. Clint trudges by to the cockpit. Sam tilts his head back and closes his eyes.

* * *

 

Natasha watches the news play with muted words in the corner of a diner in Huntsville, Texas. The subtitles tell her it is the end of a press briefing of Stark Industries, the ticker reading something about Pepper Pots, CEO of Stark Industries Continuing Commitment to one thing or another. She has bleached her hair and cut it into a slanted bob-cut, swapped her clothes for tattered cargo pants and an olive tank top. With a backpack and a few days’ worth of grime on her, she looks like any other backpacker on the road.

She has only one destination she is currently trying to reach: St. Charles, Missouri. She had picked up whispers about something happening, and although her sense told her to _get the hell away_ from the States, there was also something else.

Something at the back of her head. It sounded a little like Steve, _I’m the one least likely to die trying_ , a little like Tony: _so… they’re coming for you_ bruised and battered, still giving her time to run. And then—

—gone. And she knew she had no reason, shouldn’t have had the audacity to ask but she had to. She let Fury know through whatever channels she could. So here she was, awaiting a response to reach her before she got out of state.

There was something in her, too, something she hadn’t felt in a while. A mix between peace and determination. A quiet kind of… fury? She couldn’t quite place it. The subtitles announced that, although Tony Stark hadn’t quite made an appearance in some time, the new business venture was surely his doing. She spared a thought to Rhodey, remembering the chasm that opened beneath her chest when Tony told him the prognosis _some form of paralysis._

 _No._ Natasha chastises herself, looking back down at her plate. The pancakes had lost all of their appeal three minutes before. She had to focus, though: a mission. Something to do, she needed a goal.

A tabloid had caught her attention two states ago: _The Daily Beast: The Blob, Fact or Fiction? A small town in Missouri weights in with their own destruction!_ And the photo had been bad, admittedly so, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the giant mass’s glow that she couldn’t shake off.

Besides, she had free time now. All she _had_ was time.

The waitress that approaches the table is not the one that refilled her coffee seven minutes and twenty seconds ago. When the young woman places a folded receipt on the table without a comment, Natasha gives it a few more bites of what is left of her meal before opening the receipt casually.

Official: Package returned safely. Back in NY. Status: complete.

Natasha sighs and lowers the receipt into her left pocket, picking up her napkin as she does so. When she places her napkin on top of her plate, the Waitress walks by and offers Natasha her check unless she would like anything else on the menu. Natasha thanks her as she picks up the plate and utensils from the countertop.

Status: Complete.

This is it.

Just Natasha, alone, no longer privy to the truth. She shrugs it off as she digs into her pocket for the right amount of bills, just a little extra on the tip. She doesn’t have to worry about that, then. As long as she blends in, makes no waves, she should make it easily to Missouri.

There are some things that are harder to shake than others, and after enough time running with people that could fly, that transcended time had burned this into her bones. These people had sat down for a late morning at a diner, just like this, and thirteen people had been absorbed into the rolling mass of… whatever it was that spilled over the city and devoured buildings like a massive wave.

It was one last thing to see. And then she could focus all her energy on dodging Ross and keeping herself busy.

Besides, it was probably nothing anyway. Just her own way of making an excuse to stay around as long as she possibly could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I tagged this as canon divergence 'cause. Well. Okay, I think Wanda was handled horribly, there was so much more they could have done with even JUST the Tesseract, and when I hear Infinity Wars, I want a whole lot more than like... three or four four-man squads as being the "focal" groups alright. Also, this is a shorter chapter than what I usually write. Just gonna throw that out there. 
> 
> Also, why did the whole Missouri thing not crop up in any movie? Did it get covered in Agents of Shield? 'Cause I'm barely catching up on that so I wouldn't know.
> 
> What's up with Clint?


	3. Person or Persons Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn't know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn't even know about the possession... [b]ut he's going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he's lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners..." - Rod Serling, 'Person or Persons Unknown' 
> 
> Oh hello, Tony. Hello, Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't know I had comments and I'm sorry y'all I'll start replying ASAP!

It turns out to be a lot easier to find the giant mass than Natasha had thought. Three truck stops later, she’d met a man that wrote for an online blog on different _alien_ happenings around the US, and safe spots that weren’t ‘covered in red tape and bureaucracy’ for the everyday man that wanted to experience the extra-terrestrial visitations without the fear of city-wide annihilation. He’d been kind enough for the three hours they had to drive, and although he fought to keep the trip free of any charge— _I’m going there anyway, besides I caught you at a diner where I was eating so it’s not like I’m going out of my way_ —she had already slipped two of her last twenty-dollar bills into the center cup holder of his car, one of the only things more often cleared out in the mess of the car.

When they were about ten miles or so from the city, the driver let her know that he would be stopping early in the city to talk to some people and try to get interviews. He asked her if she wanted to get dropped off or if she would mind stopping about seven or eight minutes away.

“I gotta ask them some questions,” the man says, shrugging. “So I can either take you or you get off with me at about a fifteen-minute walk from the scene.” She swallowed and looked out the window, formulating. On one hand, no one would suspect some random road yuppie, and on the other no one remembers the tag-along going for an interview. At the sign welcoming guests into the Beautiful City of St. Charles when she asked him if it was okay if she joined him in this, too. He had looked at her strangely for a few seconds and a rock began to form in the pit of her stomach.

“I had… family,” she said, voice pitched low, “in… New York.” He inhales sharply. “I’ve been roaming since, you know. No home, no family… I just like knowing what else is out there. In case I’m blind sighted again.” The best lie was always wrapped in truth.

They didn’t speak for another few minutes, driving within the city boundaries towards the rural neighborhood the incident occurred in. When the young man pulls over and parks the car, Natasha makes to unbuckle herself.

“Wait,” the young man instructs, raising his palm in the same motion. The young man paused for a second before reaching behind them over the center console to pull out a large black shirt. He tosses it at her without a word and then shifts to shuffle among the garbage and random items on the floor of the back seats. “Alright, look, if you want to hear what these people say you’re gonna have to change. It’s not your size but ‘dirty hitchhiker’ is not the kind of person that gets people to talk to them about stuff like this.”

Natasha glances down at her sweat yellowed and dirt-stained white muscle shirt. So she _might_ look a little crusty, but c’mon. It's not like _she_ was going to be the one asking questions.

“—and you don’t ask them any questions. Got it?” The young man fishes out some baby wipes from under the hoard of trash. He hands then to Natasha who takes the hint and starts wiping herself down. Its no shower but it would have to do. “I heard from some of the people that dropped by that the rumor is it started behind a Dairy Queen that got swallowed completely—or destroyed, some of ‘em were hazy on that. Electric blue, they said. Like a cool eruption of lava that stopped for a few minutes, enough for some more folks to leave the area, and then moved for a quick minute before stopping completely.” They get out of the car, Natasha tying the oversized shirt into a balled up knot to the left of her hip to look more natural and feeling fresher than she had in days.

He meets her eyes over the hood of his mid-90’s car. With an exaggerated gesture of ‘my eyes are on you’ he loudly whispers, “no questions!”

After three doors slammed in their face and walking past a polite but equally harsh sign signaling that no,  _no one in this house will talk to you please leave_ , they finally reach a simple white house at the end of the road.

The woman was glad to talk between her tears, giving croaky answers between asking if the young man— _good afternoon ma’am, my name is Aaron McKinley can I ask you some questions?_ —Aaron would get answers for her. Natasha looked around the solemn home, facing the stillness for the extra analysis. The woman certainly lived alone, but there were signs of another person, someone else…

“Do you have any hope for the people that may have gotten stuck in there”, Aaron asked, iPhone recording between himself and the tear-stained face of the older woman. She shook her head even as she said yes, that her daughter had been mid-shift and would have been in the Dairy Queen that was first over taken.

Natasha swallowed harshly. That answered _that_ question. Aaron thanked her for her interview and the woman asked once more if he would let her know if he found out anything that would help her get her daughter.

“Even if she, if she’s d-dead,” the woman snuffled, “please, I want to at least get to bury my baby girl, she’s all I’ve got.”

One hand on the steering wheel, Natasha thinks, but the car is driving off the cliff. There is no control, is there, only the illusion of it? Her eyes track the last tear as it travels down the woman’s wrinkled cheek. She imagines Charlie Spencer’s mom looked the same, too.

They leave.

She’d imagined a giant quarantine, had heard Clint’s tale of how long it had taken before they were able to quarantine Thor’s hammer over in New Mexico. A few people were able to try to take a stab at trying to lift it before they had managed to set up. But this—this wasn’t even an attempt.

It had clearly been assimilated into the city, at least, with vendors lined over the smoothed mound of what looked like… igneous rock, like a volcano erupted in the middle of the city, encasing a good maybe block or block and a half.

The sidewalk leading up to the bulbous mound was paved with photos of missing loved ones assumed to be within the mass. Flowers and old candles take up most of the sidewalk, so the street had been closed in a single to two block radius where people walked.

Natasha shakes Aaron’s hand. “Thank you,” she says, “for this.”

“Its no problem,” Aaron smiles and he pauses for a moment. “I know you travel a lot, and that it would probably be hard, but if you hear anything or want a new destination, well, I mean. I know some people. But, say if you hear anything and you think there _might_ be something to it, I have a dirty ass car and a face that little old ladies can’t say no to.” He places a card and a rolled bundle of paper into her palm.

“Sure thing,” Natasha says with a smile as she hopes over the sidewalk. They raise their hands in goodbye and when Natasha looks at the bundle in her hand she snorts at the sight of her two bills folded together behind Aaron’s business card.

She walks around the area seemingly aimlessly, listening to bits and pieces from the people milling about. She wonders if she would be able to track down Bruce to analyze some of the mass. When she gets closer to the dark mass, the hairs on her arm begin to raise. It feels like she is walking through static, light but there. Like walking through a wall of cobwebs, something… _wrong_ clings to her skin. Cameras face the mound conspicuously; on walls, posts freshly created within the weeks the anomaly had been there. Men in riot gear stand around, watching all the people.

Shit, she thinks. She’s trying to find a way to maybe take a sample, and this thing must be _massive_ it shouldn’t be possible to cover all of it. She will find a way. She needs to. Maybe someone on her travels will be able to help with this, to see if this was something that would return.

If it was a symptom of something larger.

She’s doing her third circle around the perimeter of the mass when she notices that she’s starting to attract second glances. She crosses the next street and then turns into a small Mexican food restaurant. She decides to order something—it is early evening, and although the restaurant is mostly full she’s able to order and find herself a seat at the corner bar to wait for her order.

Blend in. Can’t be caught. She watches as families eat together, as travelers sit and soothe the heat with some horchata and Pepsi. They call her order so she smiles at the middle aged woman sitting next to her. With a nod towards her bag, the woman smiles back. When Natasha gets up to retrieve her order, she’s mapping a three-am hike to the mound perhaps between a light pole and the corner store’s camera, if she calculated correctly there would be a two-foot blind spot. The front door opens with a light bell ring.

“Tengo collares, cenizas enbotellados, y rosarios hechos todos del cometa, todo lo que se necesita pa’ mantener alejado el mal! Desde’l cielo y al infierno, nada te tocará!” An old woman with a tall black cart says, going up to the first table where the family responds to her in low Spanish. Natasha freezes in front of the counter, _it can’t be this easy._ She looks at the woman fixing a burrito, who looks at her perplexed.

Natasha trains her face to relax. She probably looked _horrified_. But the words had taken a second to translate and she didn’t think before reacting facially, at least.

 _It can’t be this easy_.

“Gracias,” she says and she turns to walk to the bar at a reasonable pace. The woman is making her rounds to the booths first, then the tables. Natasha hasn’t noticed that she hasn’t touched any of her food until the woman goes up to the bar. Natasha turns a bit as she asks the woman next to Natasha. Her cart has extra metal bars running across the handles: the top has rosaries of black stone, the second with necklaces wrapped just enough for about an inch of jingle space with small black stones pierced through with a metal bit that holds it as a pendant; all around the bottom are zip-tied bottles of fine black ash, all presumably from the mound just yards away.

When the woman turns to Natasha, Natasha clears her throat. “Puedo ver?” she asks, motioning to the items. The woman gives an affirmative and Natasha slides off her stool to look at the trinkets better and with a finer eye for details.

The pendants are fake, that far she knows. The rock that is outside is not shiny, dulled and a little sandy to the touch. When she motions at the rosary, the woman raises a single brow in question.

“Esta bien si lo toco?” Natasha asks and the woman chews on the question before responding. Natasha needs to feel the material, find out if this woman

“No duro, entiende, ese material se quebra fácilmente,” the woman warns and Natasha knows then. “Mi sobrino lo obtuvo durante esos primeros días, mientras que muchos se los estaban llevaron por sí mismos.”

Natasha begins to reach out her hand to feel the ashy surface, the uneven cut of each hand made rosary bead. And this woman, her nephew had just taken a piece, maybe a few pieces during the first few days when no one knew who to send and so no one was there.

“Pa cuanto?” she asks, unhooking a rosary. “How much?”

“Uno por beinte o dos por treinta,” the woman says, “two for thirdy.”

_It is that easy._

 

Tony Stark opens his eyes for the first time, five days after Nick Fury loomed over his unconscious form. He chokes on the thick tube down his throat and tears come to his eyes as the machines around him begin to beep uncontrollably. He thinks he hears someone running towards him, but by the time they make it he is falling under once more.

 

In the room of a somewhat-destroyed home in Sokovia, Sam Wilson places a damp towel on Wanda’s forehead. She has been delirious and feverish for some time now. In another room, Clint sits with Scott as they discuss the materials they’ve scavenged and how to continue building without Wanda’s telekinesis. Steve is out still gathering what he can from ruins, taking note of what areas are being cleared for hospitable housing.

They’ve been lucky, so far, swapping out a person to watch Wanda and make sure she stays hydrated and somewhat nourished. Its almost impossible to get coherent thoughts from her, although she had a worrying headache that had caused her nose to bleed almost non-stop for an hour or so a few times the first two days.

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” Sam says, “well, not, I mean.” He huffs out a breath, the weight of the past few weeks weighing on him harder. He doesn’t even know who is at the door, only knows that it opened and shut and, besides a step or two behind him, nothing.

“I’ve, I mean, not intimately, or anything, but I think I’ve seen something like this before,” Scott says after a few seconds. He walks closer to Sam and becomes a light presence by his side. Sam thinks he can smell him getting closer and sighs again.

No running water, not really, and only scrounging up what they could find… Sam knew they could only wait until Wanda got better to move again.

“Where, then?” Sam asks, finally looking to his left to meet Scott’s gaze. Wanda murmurs something in her fitful rest and her eyes move rapidly even in sleep.

“Sometimes, when someone would use drugs and stuff, they’d have to, like, well, basically there’s _no drugs allowed in prison_ and if someone was a user they’d have to get clean…” Scott wipes a weary hand across his face. Sam turns back to Wanda, to her ashen complexion, the tattered blankets weighing her down despite the fever, how she wakes up cold and delirious.

“You think this is… withdraw?” Sam clarifies, although something in that makes sense it _doesn’t make sense._

Scott sounds like he is on the same page, whispering, “well, its… my best guess, to be honest, but the only thing that wouldn’t make sense is…”

“What was she doing that she can’t do now… that is causing this.” Sam finishes and sighs as he leans forward, bends his arms on his knees and slumps his head onto his palms.

 

When Tony opens his eyes a second time, a few hours later, he is still in the emergency medical lab he was the first time. At least this time he’s saved the tube down the throat. He lets his gaze drift before it lands on Vision.

“Mister Stark,” Vision says, coming closer. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness since you first woke up yesterday morning. As of yesterday, we have had no sign of Natasha Romanov, Secretary Ross is being pressured by the President to declassify his files and release messages to the public about his correspondence during what the media is calling the ‘Civil War’. It seems… something has occurred that may have messed with your plans.”

“I’m feeling fine, ‘oh that’s good to hear’ thank you so much,” Tony rasps as Vision hands him a cup of water with a little straw poking out. “I take it everything went… well?” Tony asks after a pause to drink.

Vision smiles faintly, taking the cup back, “I suppose I believed that would go without saying, but perhaps hearing it is just as calming: yes, there has been complete integration, and although your ribs will ache for quite some time, the new reactor will hold nicely. Friday and I have already mapped out, along with Helen, a sort of exercise regime to help you calibrate with the nanites.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, tired already, “wouldn’t want to glitch out in the middle of dinner and suddenly bust out a gauntlet or something. I think I’m past the age where _premature ej—”_

“Would you like to know the news?” Vision interrupts and Tony lets a soft chuckle escape before—uff, alright, yeah, that was the ache he was warned about.

“Am I going to have to sit around here for this?” Tony returns, hand itching to scratch where he _knows_ an IV line had been connected to him. The itch of the punctures was incorrigible. He aches to get back to the facility.

“Remodeling has been done to fix the sub-levels, but the ground level is still a work in progress,” Vision reports, watching Tony sit up. “Colonel Rhodes has been residing in the East Wing, however,  and has maintained his strict physical therapy regime accordingly. I have calibrated his braces twice,” Vision pauses.

“You have the face of nothing but bad news,” Tony sighs, “nothing god destroyed while I was out, right?”

“Well no, but…” Vision pauses. Tony feels his anxiety mounting.

“C’mon man, the build-up is killing me,” Tony says, reaching out to grab Vision as he tries to stand up on shaky, unused legs. “Tell me on the way back, then.”

Tony’s slightly changed—he’s in sweatpants, the easiest thing to put on without having Vision dress him, and a large sweater. The skin around the new arc reactor is more sensitive than before, or maybe it's just from the time without one that Tony can’t remember if it always felt like that.

He’s tired. He’d like nothing more than to get into bed and sleep for the next century and a half and never look at another goddamn politician’s face again. Vision doesn’t turn to face him as they go down the elevator, but he does speak.

“Captain Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes have broken into and taken the fugitives remaining in the Raft. During his escape, whichever technological hack they used to get in also fried FRIDAY’s bug in the system.”

The elevator doors open, but Tony only leans back against the far wall and lets his head thump again and again.

“And you’re sure it's them?” Tony grumbles as Vision holds the button to keep the doors open.

“Yes, positive. None of the guards were severely hurt and there has yet to be an official APV within the states for the fugitive Avengers. It seems Ross is trying to play this close to his chest.” Tony keeps his head tilted back, groans, and waits a few more seconds.

“But that’s it, right, that’s the worse of it all?” Tony mumbles, rubbing the arc reactor through the sweater. The cold sting of the zipper centers him, if only for a few more moments. “No countries on fire, no new disasters?”

“Not so,” Vision nods, but looks pensive. Tony looks at him and then thumps his head once more on the wall.

“Don’t make that face, you’re too young to have an _it gets worse_ face please don’t do this to me right now,” Tony whines even as he pushes himself off the wall and the two fall into step together and head towards a black SUV with tinted windows. “What else is there?”

“This isn’t perhaps as urgent as unsettling,” Vision begins, “but I believe I know where the Rogue Avengers are.”

Tony gawks. “W-Okay, first of all, how? And-and then you gotta, buddy, what??”

Vision stares ahead, through the driver and into some other sacred place of his own. “I can sense Wanda.”

“Is this some kind of imprinting, you think?” Tony asks, and despite the somewhat cavalier choice of words, Vision thinks he understands. “You and her, uh, you did have an-uh, _emotional_ bond, and we aren’t exactly sure what that, that there precious little thing that gives you life does. Loki,” Tony swallows, but charges on, “he could control people, using the scepter, and we both know Strucker wasn’t using it to cure world hunger; he was… experimenting. It also infected the systems and-and somehow programmed itself into ULTRON.” Tony sighs and closes his eyes. “So it could be bad, sure, but it could also just be something harmless.  Pietro and Wanda’s powers came from the stone, right?”

Vision hesitates. “All information points to ‘yes’ but I fear it was… different to what we have been led to believe. Although some part of the stone would instinctually reach out, it seemed not to do so in comfort but… in self-preservation. A consistent need to know where she was.”

“You could feel her… while at the Compound?” Tony asks, “And the stone was afraid?”

“I could sense her presence, yes, much more keenly than others. And it was less fear than…” Vision thinks for a second, searching for words. “How Natasha instinctively looks for exits. The way you break down and rebuild, at least in your mind, the technology around you. Safety. Comfort.”

Silence reigns for a few minutes. Each lost in thought, the ride feels longer than expected.

“Twice.”

“Hmm?” Tony turns, startled. “Twice what?”

“Twice I have found myself lost in thought, and both times… I imagined the Rogue Avengers, through one of their eyes.” Vision says airily. “I have spoken to Colonel Rhodes on this, and he believes my solutions may lie in London.”

Tony looks like he wants to say something but swallows the response. “London… the only other person that had been exposed to Loki’s scepter, back before New York,” _before the Avengers_ he doesn’t say, but Vision hears it nonetheless, “had been Dr. Selvig. And the only person, the one with less exposure but longer than most… was Clint Barton.”

Vision shuts his eyes as they pull up to the long path leading up to the Compound.

“Yes,” he says, although he knows he doesn’t need to, “this is how I know that the others… are in Sokovia.”

 

In London, shoved beneath a pile of blankets in a spare room in Jane Foster’s apartment, Dr. Erik Selvig sneezes a whopping four times in a row. He looks around in a daze, but the light from outside shows no dust floating in any break of darkness from the blinds. Nothing but the falling mist of his sneezes.

“You better _not_ be getting sick!” Darcy yells from the living room. Erik groans and slumps further into his cocoon.

He better _be_ getting sick, or else this was something much worse. He hadn’t felt this sort of… stuffiness in his brain since, since…

_Let’s take a look, shall we?_

 

Steve huffs as he throws himself on the ground, the last slab of concrete sliding off into a pile where the rest he had moved were stacked. At least some of the, or what he assumed to be, supermarket was somewhat intact beneath the mixed crushed remains of the other three quarters. He stayed like that for a second, just breathing.

He shouldn’t have come alone. He should have brought someone to help, although considering their ranks he would be doing the heavier lifting anyway.

He just. Needed to be alone. Just for a bit, at least, and then he could go back and face them.

Physical labor helped, somewhat. At least he was so tired he had to sleep at the end of the day. But it was the… the urge to keep moving. To not stay in one place. He didn’t want to leave Wanda, hell no, not after everything but… he didn’t want to _sty_ , either. Something inside of his chest wanted to claw out, was effectively suffocating him in the ruins of the house they were hunkered in.

Like before the serum. How his body tried to keep up, always falling behind, hacking, wheezing—

Steve gets up quickly, dusting off his hands on his pants. There hadn’t been too much they could take before T’Challa had swapped into silence, but at least the few amenities had been worthwhile. He climbs down to where a few scattered bottles of water are littered with rotting chips and stale food. The smell is somewhere between rot and destruction.

At least when he was younger he’d had his mother and he’d had Bucky. And-and he should be grateful to the _others_ , he _is_ , but there’s just something wrong. Steve’s so lost in thoughts he doesn’t notice that he’s literally _crushed a water bottle_ in his hand until he’s panting and watching the water drip down to his elbows. The water had picked up as much dirt as it could on its way down, dripping in greying splotches on the light dusting of plaster and rubble.

He’s watching, and breathing heavily, and he can hear Bucky’s voice in the back of his mind full of disappointment _you know how much one of those costs in a place like this?_ Steve snorts and tries to even his breathing, knows the tightness of his chest is probably just him, it’s all just Steve.

“This is what I have to do,” Bucky had told him, “I know you’ll understand.”

Steve had only smiled down at his hands, and then found himself pulled into Bucky by one arm for a long hug. Steve had tensed for only a second before he raised his arms and wrapped them around Bucky in return.

“I know,” Steve had rasped, “and when they find a way—”

“End of the line,” Bucky says primly, pulling back with a watery smile. “I’m not… there’s no take-backs, punk.”

And then he stepped back, with that same little smile and took a deep breath as the ice took over.

Always ice. Steve wonders if this is just something that will follow him forever. Cold and silence and something that drowns but doesn’t kill.

Just leaves you wishing a little like it could. Like something in your life will be merciful, for once. He sighs as He pulls the nap sack they’d found full of metal gadgets and small tools that he had emptied for this venture. He starts packing the sack with bottles of water, kicking around wrappers and rubble to see what else he can find.

He hadn’t looked at the cellphone in his torn jean pockets since the morning when he first left a few hours ago, had seen the battery wink at him with only 17% left, and decided that it would need all the juice it could store for the foreseeable future. He doesn’t want to think about the past. Like the Valkyrie, like Bucky, it was something to leave, frozen and stagnant in his past.

See? A pattern. Easy: climb up, find things, hide them away in your heart; be disheartened. Let down. Freeze. Throw it all away. Thaw. Repeat.

Thaw. Thaw. _You’re in the middle of heat, you’re supposed to start doing better_ , Steve thinks, _you’re breaking your pattern_. He hates how that voice sounds a little more like Tony than anyone else. Besides, he hadn’t—

“Natasha is MIA,” Clint said with a frown. He handed Steve back the burner phone. Gave no comment or outward inclination to know anything about it, “we can’t be sure if Ross has her or if Tony is keeping her locked in the Compound.”

“You really think Stark can hold her if Natasha has to leave?” Sam asked with a snort.

“You had, what, _two_ years working with her,” Clint said, pinching between his brows, “and now you think you know everything about Nat? If its safer for her to stay inside, she will stay inside those goddamn walls. Natasha wouldn’t take extraneous risks, especially if T’Challa tells them that she _attacked him while trying to stop Steve and Barnes._ ” Clint let his hand drop and looked at Steve. “You’re keepin’ an eye on the phone, right?”

Steve looked down at the flip phone in his hand and nodded silently.

“Alright, if you get _anything_ , you let us know,” Clint took a step closer, placed his hand on the crook of Steve’s arm. Steve looked up and they met eyes. “Anything, Steve. We deserve to know.”

But that had been it. He was getting ready to tell them about—Siberia, Buck’s choice, T’Challa, and then Wanda had gone to rest and hadn’t woken up for longer than a few minutes

Steve takes a deep breath, puts on a neutral face, and then pushes the door with his shoulder to pry it open. Sam and Scott turn to him quickly from just beyond the bare doorway and then shift back to observing Wanda, who is out of his line of sight. Clint is leaning against the counter, seemingly contemplating. Clint raises a hand in greeting, and Steve shoves the door back into it's muddled frame.

Repeat. Repeat, repeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God dammit Vision, letting the CAT OUT OF THE BAG. Snitches get stitches, yo. 
> 
> Sorry for the maudlin Steve. It's gonna hurt before there's some comfort... and the universe is far more expansive than we know.


	4. The Howling Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary and found, instead... [there's an] ancient folk saying: 'You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long." -Rod Serling, episode 2x5 ("The Howling Man")
> 
> Tony finds that, unfortunately, the world kept rolling forward while he was out. If he could pinpoint how other people would react, life would be a lot easier. Isn't there a law out there about how the only thing that is certain is uncertainty?
> 
> Vision gambles with the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how Ross was a hard-ass at the beginning of Infinity War with Rhodey? I actually liked that. I'm keeping that.
> 
> Also I just watched Ant-Man and The Wasp, so **there are slight spoilers** but not enough to _actually_ count as spoilers. I think this is actually even just mentioned in the trailer and then re-imagined here.

**\- Wakanda: Two Weeks and Four Days Earlier –**

“I know you followed me,” Shuri says, smacking the Black Panther costume she has standing. She taps at her wrist to add in some numbers into her calculation, not enough kinetic energy absorption; if three-thousand and three-hundred newtons would break an ordinary man’s rib, add in the strength of the Panther… 

“I don’t care if you’re going through the video files for what happened in Vienna,” a female voice says from behind Shuri. “And I am here on my own volition. You leave… not much in terms of presence, or even a signature. It was hard coming here.”

“Well,” Shuri inputs more data in the air in front of her, shoves them into the prototype, “I’m not one to pat my own back, but Stark can _suck it_. But that doesn’t explain why you’ve come, there’s nothing for you to see.”

“I am flying blind here,” the voice says with a hint of mirth, “but I am not here to access secrets of the princess of Wakanda. I have… something for you.”

“Then you should also understand that I have less than no need for anything of Stark’s—”

“You’re mistaken,” the voice says, and Shuri’s about to snap back when it hurries on, “this isn’t for you, exactly. And Tony Stark doesn’t know I’m here. As far as Mister Stark knows, no one has been in the network except myself.” This pique’s Shuri’s interest.

“And you are…?”

“I am… a delivery girl, for now.” The voice says with slight hesitation. “I have to recede, but I know you’ll know when you see it.”

“Wait—who is it for, then?” Shuri asks, turning around. The presence has gone, she notices, and when she looks through her lab she doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first. She rolls her eyes; _a gift from Tony Stark_ , she had a smallpox joke on the tip of her tongue.

Wait. _A gift…_

Shuri turned quickly back towards the staircase where a small box was resting on the bottom step, a small bow perched on the center. It wasn’t tangible; although the presence hadn’t been able to use anything but the audio in the lab, it seemed to have been able to read at least some of the technology and digitized the small box hologram. Shuri, a little less annoyed and a lot more intrigued, opens the box.

She spilled the contents and her wrist lit up: videos, schematics, and notes all neatly organized into a single file called B.A.R.F. Other files began to stack, more videos, images; a report she could only briefly see, note-worthy for the signature on the bottom. _T’challa’s_. It closed into another folder: Vienna Bombing.

The inside of the lid had a note, “just between you, me, and the icicle - FRIDAY”

* * *

 

**Present time - Upstate, New York: Avengers Compound.**

“Good to see you, boss,” Friday greets once Vision and Tony get to the front door. “Colonel Rhodes has been keeping Ross busy as long as he can, but you’re both needed in the conference room. I’m afraid his patience is running low.”

Tony nods and looks at Vision askance.

“Before we go in,” Tony taps a restless finger on the center of his chest, where the zipper is covering a good portion of the new reactor’s light. “If he asks, anything, about what we know about the-the… the others, what are you going to do?”

Vision meets Tony’s gaze and then drops to watch the tap-tap-tapping finger.

“I do not owe them anything,” Vision begins, eyes darting forward once more. “Just as they felt no need to think about who they hurt or lied to. I do not owe my allegiance to… them.” Tony swallows, taps a little faster. They begin their trek to the conference room once more, slower. “I understand that it may be strange for you to hear this, but you have been… incapacitated for some time, and for you the Accords and Siberia were only days ago. Colonel Rhodes and I have had more time to deal with this, and the council. If something takes you off guard, we can take over.”

They’ve reached the window panes, can see how Ross glares at them as they approach the door. How Rhodey’s happiness is tempered by the clench of his jaw. Tony takes a deep breath—god, he’s so fucking _tired_ , and the arm that reaches for the door is trembling slightly. The bones are mostly healed, aching like crazy.

Vision’s right; it feels like it was just yesterday. Like his body hasn’t healed at all.

Tony opens the door anyway, ushers Vision in with a flourish.

“After you,” Tony says with a wink.

 

There are some things Tony has missed since he had gone AWOL. With Ross standing there, presenting his fury with supposed failures, he supposes that it is to be expected. He hadn’t _planned_ for Rogers to stage a break out and _fuck with his surveillance_ ; he hadn’t expected the way Ross would automatically hone in on Siberia and crucify Tony in front of the Accords council during his hearing.

He hadn’t expected T’challa to _deny Tony’s presence_ in Siberia. He had expected Zemo to tell the entire sordid story. Preach it from his cell, proclaim it all to the world.

Tony should have known better than to expect anything, really. This was just another testament to everything that led him here, biting his tongue while Ross paints a tragic picture with his hands, with his righteousness.

“They have the recording of your retelling of the events in Siberia and they say they’ve taken into consideration all the factors. The fact that Zemo isn’t talking and the King of Wakanda claimed he did not see you there when he recovered the man responsible for the Vienna bombing leaves us with only one possible solution.” Ross’s voice has been raising with each line of reasoning, and Tony absolutely hates everything in the cosmos that has aligned everything just so for the next point he knows is coming.

“Did you aid the fugitive Avengers Clint Barton, Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, and Scott Lan in their escape?” Ross demands and Rhodey had the misfortune to rise his cup of water to his lips at the same moment and chokes. Vision remains impassive in the face of Ross’s increasing agitation and— _god_ , smugness, too, on top of everything. Rhodey turns to Tony while patting his own chest with a quick shake of his head.

Don’t tell him a thing.

“Is this a meeting,” Tony says after a second, “or is this an inquiry? I was told by the Accords Council that my actions in Siberia were going to be held as my statement and that no repercussions would come of my impromptu investigation. You, Secretary Ross, are not in control of the Accords Council, nor are you privy to information that belongs to the UN.”

Ross smirks like he was waiting for Tony to say that.

“That’s an Accords issue, this is a United States Government issue. You see, the Raft was a SHIELD stronghold, and when SHIELD fell, it became property of the Department of Defense.” Ross places both hands flat on the table, staring gravely at Tony, then Vision. “Enemies of the State were kept in that prison; people with powers that have attacked innocent cities that were lost in the hub-bub of more global threats. I can tell you right now, Senator Kelly _himself_ is leading the charge behind this breakout. I mean,” Ross straightens his back, raises his hands with a shrug, “who _knows_ who else was let out during that time.”

“Are you saying that the National Security Council is on the case?” Tony replies, leaning back in his chair to look at Ross. “Because, as I understand, _it doesn’t **exist**_ , Secretary Ross. And, if it did, such a clandestine administration surely wouldn’t do well simply existing outside of public knowledge. The last group that did, well,” Tony grins over at Rhodey, who smirks back at Ross, “it didn’t end well for them.” 

“Besides, Ross,” Rhodey picks up, catching onto Tony’s momentum, “you’re here accusing someone of something as serious as aiding fugitives of the law; I’m guessing the Accords Council denied your inquiry into Tony’s post-mission interview.”

“Which would mean that you’re not here to speak to us about anything pertaining to the United State’s position on the Accords, either,” Vision continues, “nor material evidence to suggest your hypothesis has any logical basis.”

“You’re tilting at windmills,” Tony says with a shrug, sitting slightly forward, “but it’s quite a distance to travel, so why don’t you skip your posturing and get to your point. Assuming, of course, you have one.”

Ross looks at the three men sitting around the table for a few moments. Vision, sitting across from Tony, does not react to their eyes meeting. Tony and Rhodey, sitting next to each other to Ross’s right-hand side, are sitting slightly back with their hands on the table, waiting.

“There was something found in the electronic surveillance,” Ross starts, “we never lost visuals, of course, but the audio became warped. Odd, you see, and who should be in the room but Tony Stark, showing something to Sam Wilson. Now, without audio feeds, we don’t _know_ what Stark told him. He _claims_ they only told him to go to hell, and then two days later they’re broken out when we know the only person who wasn’t accounted for that had _technological access_ to the Raft’s security measures, well.

“After the destruction of the German airport, we tried to make contact with the creators of the Ant-Man suit,” Ross shrugs. “There had been some files not completely scrubbed from the SHIELD-slash-HYDRA file dumb about one Hank Pym and his work with SHIELD both as a scientist and as an agent. I hope the name at least sounds a little familiar, I think they had some history with your father Howard Stark.” Ross cocks an eyebrow at Tony, “not a good relationship, according to what we were able to find and trace back. When we went looking for them to… _understand_ why they would aid someone in criminal activity, they were gone.

“We tried tracing who tipped them off—because the home was mostly vacated, and we haven’t been able to pinpoint their location. For all we know, they’re not even in San Francisco. With their money and their knowledge, there’s no way to know if they’re even in the country.” Ross raps his knuckles against the table, a smirk tugging on his lips.

“Lo and behold, all of our greatest technicians can find no calls made, no kind of message in their system. Nothing. It doesn’t even look like Scott Lang contacted them, either, after interrogating his ex-wife and daughter.”

“You interrogated his _family_ ,” Rhodey starts and Ross rolls his eyes, “his daughter is what, how old is she, Ross, isn’t nine a little too young, even for you?” Tony grinds his teeth, tries to unclench his jaw.

All of this is _news_ to him. He hadn’t—why hadn’t they just come out and said they hadn’t condoned Scott’s use of the suit? Separated themselves from someone that unintentionally put a target on their head—on the _whole company’s head_ —as international lawbreakers?

People, Tony muses angrily, taking deep breaths, don’t tend to think in the long term, do they? Don’t try to think about the people left in their wake. He doesn’t remember Hank Pym very well, tries to remember the last time he was in a room with the senior and can only picture his daughter Hope. Hope, who’d only repeated ‘no comment’ the first few days Tony had been able to keep himself running despite everything.

He should have put more attention.

“What this left me with,” Ross says, a little more somber after Rhodey’s comment, “is someone technologically advanced that could leave a message and remain incognito from government surveillance and review. Cards on the table, everything leads back here,” Ross taps his knuckles against the table, “more specifically to Stark. Aiding and abetting criminals in Siberia is one thing, once it is _supposedly_ excused by the Accords Committee. You’ll find that the United States government is not quite as lenient and more than weary. Without the proof of what happened in Siberia, and with Stark here going AWOL for a bit, well. Call us paranoid—”

“Paranoid.” Tony says, but Ross simply continues with a roll of his eyes.

“—or call us cautious, but the point remains that someone capable of making and maintaining a suit like Scott Lang’s being unaccounted for is stressing some people that don’t like to be stressed. The Accords are international, yes, but this is pushing some people to make their moves to create something at home.”

“Are you _threatening us_ , Ross?” Rhodey sits up, tilts his head. “Because, historically, Avengers and threats don’t end well.”

“Is that what you are?” Ross retorts, “Avengers?”

“What do you want, then,” Vision says at last, feeling the power imbalance in the room, “with this supposed ‘warning’, Secretary.”

“I’m here to formally let you… Avengers know what’s in the works. A sort of… superhuman registration, I suppose. And it is gaining in followers in powerful positions, who have seen the results of event trying to restrain one of our own. I’m here to warn you that… it is coming. And its being written as I stand here. However, if we were to meet halfway, well…”

“They want… an act of good faith…” Tony says, eyes drifting somewhere to Ross’s left. “Something to appease the more… zealous supporters, to satisfy the more moderate. Shift the conversation, so to speak.”

“That’s right,” Ross straightens up, begins to pat down his jacket. “Appeasement, of sorts, I suppose, although it seems like nothing will stave off the strictest regulations except—”

“My testimony of Siberia,” Tony says, right hand tapping on his chest, eyes going glazed, “or a… paper trail, of sorts, to clear me of the breakout and my whereabouts during.” Tony’s breath hitches when he meets Ross’s eyes, and he hates how this blindsides him, makes his chest ache worse than the new reactor.  “Or—”

* * *

 

**Ruins of the Western Border of Sokovia.**

A burst of static erupts from the audio port of the Quinjet. Steve, standing beside Scott, startles. Scott raises an eyebrow at Steve, takes a swig of his water. It is late evening, almost night now; Wanda’s fever has abated at last, and they wait for any sign of lucidness before attempting to get her to eat a little, to rehydrate.

“The jet,” Steve explains, tilting his head to listen, “I think… someone is trying to create contact with us.”

“Stark?” Scott asks, something closer to panic in his voice. Steve shakes his head.

“Want me to check it out?” Clint calls out from the restroom where he was trying to wash off some of the dirt from the past week. “Sam, with me, I’ll work the signal, you work the mic?”

* * *

 

**Upstate, New York: Avengers Compound.**

“Or we give the location of the rogue Avengers,” Vision says solemnly, staring at Tony. “This is assuming we… know their location, to begin with.” Rhodey looks at Vision oddly, then looks at Tony, at the slight tremble in his left arm that clenches the armrest.

“Any leads,” Ross corrects, “as an act of good faith. So we know that the… Avengers that remained do, in fact, show loyalty to their country and not loyalty in their fugitive members.”

“This appeasement,” Vision begins, “does this mean that this so-called registration will be off the table, so to speak?”

Ross shrugs. “Depending on the information, and what it leads to. The government and its people, I’m afraid, will still be keeping a close eye on vigilantism and the Accords are, of course, still in effect. The government might just slow a bit in pushing for stricter revisions. Perhaps the whole issue of registration may just dwindle off if the shift is good.”

No promises, then. Vision is still carefully watching Tony, though, and when Tony notices he puts both hands on the table, subtly shakes his head.

Don’t do it.

Vision closes his eyes for a second, then another.

* * *

 

**Ruins of the Western Border of Sokovia.**

Wanda opens her eyes. Scott is listening to Steve as Steve relays what is going on outside: Clint is strengthening the signal while Sam talks to someone in the headset; so far and no longer using the main speaker, it is harder for Steve to listen but apparently it is good news.

“We,” Wanda croaks and sets off a set of coughs that make startle the two other men. “We need to go.” Wanda is sitting up slowly, weak by fatigue and dehydration. She reaches for the bottle by her side and downs it; the warm water is like heaven to her dry throat.

“Wanda, you’ve been out of it for—”

“Steve, I don’t _care_ , we need to _leave_! _”_ Wanda repeats, shifting slowly to sit on the edge of the bed. “They are going to come.”

“Wanda, no one knows we’re here,” Scott says, handing her another bottle. This time Wanda pours some into her cupped palm and splashes on her face before drinking more. Her skin feels grimy with sweat, but her head.

She feels clearer than she has in _years_.

“They do, Steve, and now they will come.” Wanda closes her eyes. Squeezes the bottle in her hand. She can still feel the two men, though, knows they are looking at each other in bafflement. “And we only have enough time to leave before they start imagining a trail.”

* * *

 

**Upstate, New York: Avengers Compound.**

“The fugitive Avengers,” Vision says, still looking at Tony, “are amongst the ruins of Sokovia.”

Silence fills the room. Rhodey bites his tongue to swallow the questions he wants to ask, but Ross. Ross smirks. Grins. Nods.

“Your proof?” Ross asks, hand itching to reach for his phone.

“The most temperamental, emotional response for… the members would be to go somewhere to regroup. The construction of the country is still underway, with spots around considered inhospitable to citizens. Anonymity. Without their Avengers identity, the citizens may not even know who they are.” Vision has not looked away, but Tony has closed his eyes. Ross nods, says a few parting words in thanks and leaves with his cell phone attached to his ear, barking out orders even as he leaves.

“Viz,” Rhodey starts, and Vision rises to his feet.

“We owe nothing to them,” Vision says, “and certainly not loyalty, where they have proven they do not deserve it. However, I do not take kindly to thinly veiled threats.”

Rhodes snorts, heaves himself further back into his seat, if possible.

Tony exhales, long and slow. What a shit show. Vision doesn’t smile, but his eyes shine with something Tony would call mirth.

“Secretary Ross only asked for a lead. He may find proof of the fugitives having taken shelter in Sokovia, but he will not find them in Sokovia any longer.”

* * *

 

**Airspace, Quinjet. En route to undisclosed location.**

Clint and Sam are in the hangar while Wanda tries to come up with a way to explain herself. She can’t tell them that Vision warned her—in a dream, no less, but it’s the closest explanation she can come up with herself. She’s bundled in the same ratty old blanket she’d had in the bed as Scott leans back, allowing himself to be her leaning pillar.

“It was a warning,” Wanda says.

“It was a dream,” Scott replies. Steve huffs, still leaning forward. “I mean, do you have prophetic dreams?”

“No,” Wanda whispers, rubbing her eyes, “although sometimes I find that I may not understand my own powers, sometimes. Maybe I do.”

“What… what was it you dreamt?” Steve asks, staring at the jet’s inner paneling. “It can’t be too much of a coincidence that you… see Vision warning you and we get contact.”

“He was… sitting. In the conference room, the one Ross used when he told us about… the Accords…” Wanda trails off. It seemed so long ago, when she had seen it, and it boggles her even now to know it hasn’t even been months, only a few weeks. “But it was only Stark, and Rhodes, and Ross was there, too. But it was like they were… paused? Frozen in place.

“And Viz, he… he turned to me. Like I had just been standing at the other end of the table, and he looked at me and said ‘our hands are tied, now. You must go’ and he… like time unfroze. He looked right at Stark and told Ross that we were in Sokovia.”

“He… he sold us out?” Scott squeaks, alarmed. Steve’s eyebrows knit together.

“Not… precisely. Maybe Vision did send Wanda the message.” Steve glances towards the hanger, “in which case, I think I’m more worried about… about the fact that he felt he had to tell Ross our location. How did he even know? Why are their hands tied?”

“I may be able to help with this,” A new voice says over the speakers. Wanda and Steve both recoil while Scott looks up in wonder.

“Is-is that _God?_ ” Scott wonders, panicking. Clint and Sam both snicker in the cockpit.

“Yes, Scott Lang,” the voice responds with a touch of humor, “I am god, but you may simply call me T’Challa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a beta-reader so please feel free to let me know if there are any errors! Sorry for this chapters formatting with all the leaping. Also, I don't know why all my titles are Twilight Zone themed, I have to stop marathoning it.


	5. Where Is Everybody?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting..." - Rod Serling, Twilight Zone ep. 1.1 ("Where Is Everybody?")
> 
> Surrounded by all this information and there is still no knowledge to be had.

Hank Pym was once a patient man.

No, seriously, he was. Ask Jan; it was life and his bountiful years of living it that began to wear down the bit of patience he _did_ have, and then Stark and SHIELD just gouged away at him until he was left the, apparently, “unfriendly, cranky, asshole” of an old man he was now.

So, established: Hank Pym _had_ patience, and had it in spades for certain situations. The Hank Pym facing down a plain-clothed law enforcement official—because he couldn’t be anything else, not with that kind of posture—on his own porch is not that man. This Hank Pym is _tired_ of being asked about Scott-goddamn-idiot-too-dumb-for-his-own-good-Lang, about bullshit like the Sokovia Accords, and if he has to hear the last name Stark one more time, on top of the most recent four AM move—

**San Francisco, California. Private Residence. Previously vacant lot. Property listing not known.**

“I’ll tell you what,” a new voice chimes in, “you can leave my father’s front porch, or I can start sending this video to every person’s newsfeed and you _know_ the kind of uproar people are throwing at things like ‘law enforcement harassing civilians’ much less retired, old men, so if you could kindly—” But Hope isn’t looking for a response as she slams the door shut on the man’s face. Still, as per the job, the man doesn’t immediately remove himself from their newly-grown porch.

“Ma’am, this is a matter of—"

“Top left corner, forty-five degree angle,” Hope says, and knows when the man looks because of the faint curse they hear from across the door. “As a tip, you’re supposed to show your badge or you’re entrapping, and my father is far too old and too incapacitated to understand what is going on or what you’re asking of him. Great, we have a sign warning that the premises are under surveillance—” no doubt she had the ants on it before even stepping up to the threshold because _of course there’s no sign_ , at least there _hadn’t been_ , “so if you could please remove yourself from our residence we will not need to call the police or lawyers and this won’t have to see the light of day. Or Youtube.”

Hope looks at her father, who simply stares back.

“I am not _old_ ,” Hank starts, and chooses to ignore Hope’s smirk as she walks past him to the hallway. He knows it’s because she wants to speak securely, maybe check to make sure that the agent did leave. He huffs but follows after a few seconds pause—he is _not old_ —and then he makes his way back to the surveillance room. Hope is sitting in front of a monitor, her hands still wrapped from where she was working out in another room. She looks a little weary, and Hank still needs to give Scott one good licking before he can even see Hope for the far-off look to her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Hank asks, not one to beat around the bush. Patience, he thinks to himself, is overrated. Hope is watching the split screen monitors as if waiting for something, like she knows something I going to pop up and scare them at any given moment.

Hank hates that look, hates the tension in her shoulders.

“I think we’re under surveillance,” Hope says, “by more than one person.”

“More than one, huh?” Hank sighs, rubs his forehead. “What are they, ex-SHIELD? More taskforce cronies?”

“One, for sure, is the Taskforce. I guess Ross thinks he can spare a van or two without the US government catching whiff, but the other… I’m guessing ex-SHIELD, we haven’t caught them on camera; they haven’t gone into the property, either.”

“What do you think, then?” Hank asks, because although it seems like Hope has no evidence of a second watcher, her intuition about things like this hasn’t been wrong. He hadn’t quite left the house during the first few days after the airport battle in Germany, it wasn’t like he was out and about in the first place. Hope, though, she had to trudge through the reporters, into the company, and still make like a normal, functional adult despite everything.

“I think they want to ask us something. I used the ants for surveillance, just to the alleyway and I think they’ve been… waiting.”

“You’re not going out to meet them,” Hank says firmly, and the vehemence of his voice has Hope pausing for a second. “We don’t know if they’re looking for, for—some kind of _ridiculous_ retaliation for that idiot’s actions, and we don’t know if they’re just another loon looking for some fancy tech to weaponize. You don’t go out there to meet whoever’s been lurking in the peripherals. There must be a reason why they’re not approaching, anyway. Hell, they might just _be_ another criminal themselves!”

 _I’m not the one that associated with criminals in the first place,_ Hope wants to say and bites her inner-cheek to stop herself. They had relocated three times in the two and a half weeks since Scott was seen growing obscenely and smashing things in a foreign country. She had been keeping tabs with cameras across the street from their house when the first van showed up, and although the design changed routinely (every three to four days), the driver seemed to stay the same.

But the linger-er. The person, as her dad had so poetically put it, “lurking in the peripherals”, didn’t have that same MO. They seemed more willing to wait, _actually wait,_ without the bells and whistles of someone official. Hope felt like there was something there, you know, something she couldn’t see but could sense.

A sense of hopelessness. Like the person was waiting because they _needed_ Hope and her father. To find them across the city like this, three lots later, three _homes and offices_ later, there just had to be something there.

It didn’t feel like a predator out-waiting their prey. It looked like someone... trying to find the time. The perfect time.

For what?

Hope figures her father has made his own fair share of mistakes. Could he really fault her for potentially making one on her own?

**Upstate, New York: Avengers Compound.**

When Ross is gone, it is Rhodes that speaks first now that they’ve gathered in the only available lounge area that isn’t within the construction zone. “If you’d _known_ all along—”

“I could only surmise,” Vision cuts in before the situation escalates. Tony sits back and lets Vision take over this one. He closes his eyes and promises to stay awake during this bit. “It is simple, James,” Vision only smiles when Rhodey mouths ‘James’ like it is another odd nickname, “Ross gets to look like he is, as it is said, ‘on their tail’, and will separate himself from us for some time while he follows whatever trail he can scrape up.”

“And if he finds them?” Rhodey argues back, “if he comes back with some hint of Siberia, it won’t be so easy to try to fix.”

“So we won’t fix it,” Tony says, eyes still shut. “We just keep rebuilding until it works _right_. This isn’t _for_ them, it’s for Sokovia. For Vienna. For New York, and London. Its for that little city that didn’t get its ten minutes on the news. It’s for—"

 _“The Little Guy”,_ an irritating voice that sounds like He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named says in the back of Tony’s mind, and Tony chokes on what he was going to actually say. _Its for you, my best friend, that shouldn’t have been a misfire. And that’s just it, there are too many people that are just... casualties of war. Innocent bystanders._

“Alright, alright,” Rhodey concedes, “you don’t get to say things like that while looking like hell and expect me not to cave, man, that’s just not right. I call emotional blackmail on that one but because you look so—”

“Fabulous?” Tony interjects, cracking open one eye with a smile tugging on his lips.

“—yeah, sure, lets go with that, I’ll let you slide this once,” Rhodey points at Tony and then at Vision, who startles at being at the end of such an angry, menacing finger, “but don’t _think_ I don’t know you are _both_ hiding something from me. But, because I am also a tired human being and there is still a lot to do, I will _choose_ not to push it. For now.” Tony opens both eyes, glances at Vision.

“There is still information I will need,” Vision says carefully, “before I can give you anything with certainty. However, as the time has presented itself now rather than later, there is some… may I run something by you, Colonel Rhodes?”

Rhodey throws his hands up as he slowly ambles towards the same couch Tony is lying on. The braces along his legs give a slight whirr-click when he sits, legs flat and stretched out. Rhodey’s knee—brace and all, knocks into Tony’s in a motion too deliberate to be accidental.

“Now I _know_ he learned that from _you_ ,” Rhodey says leaning back to rest the back of his head on the back cushions. “He’s gonna ask to do something and the absolutely best way to butter me up is by being respectful and pulling rank. What’s up, Viz?”

Vision smiles, a soft and fleeting thing before he looks at Tony. “I must… travel, in order to prove something. Something that may, perhaps, be vital to what will come. It may also provide many answers to many people. However, to do so I will need to leave to London to find a scientist.”

Tony doesn’t need to turn to know Rhodey’s whipped his head to stare right at him.

“Selvig. Viz needs to see Selvig to see if his powers, the powers of the Mind Stone, are something he can… retroactively effect.” Tony elaborates, “I figured we would—”

“I think it would be better,” Vision says softly, “If Colonel Rhodes were to accompany me, if that is alright.” There is a pause, like everyone inhaled at the same time.

“Viz, man,” Rhodey starts, and Tony sighs.

“It. Yeah, yeah, that’s probably for the best.” Tony looks at Rhodey’s incredulous expression before giving an affronted look, “first of all, I need sleep, and a shower, and to never, _ever_ feel a goddamn tube in my throat for the rest of my life. I need to make sure Ross didn’t rustle enough feathers with the UN, or the Accords Council, I need to check on the Spiderling, and we still have those drafted amendments… I have to change the timeline now that we don’t have evidence for the Raft—”

“I get it, man,” Rhodey says, “there is a lot you’re gonna have to move around, man. I got this. What do you think, Viz, two days, tops? I’ll make it back in time for some PT and then I’ll get down to my part of the plans and the nitty-gritty. Sounds fair, right? Two days. You rest up, you practice your,” Rhodey flaps a hand towards Tony’s chest, “thingy, and then we get down to business.”

“FRIDAY will keep an eye on you during your trip, _Shang_.” Tony says, still looking at Rhodey. “I know we’re not expecting trouble, and they won’t-wouldn’t do something stupid so for now we should be in the clear on the _others_ front. But for now, I’ve been warned by the Council that, thus far, Zemo has been silent. His last request—”

_“He says that he is done, but—Dr. Stark, he requested that you come in and speak to him, and then refused to speak unless it was to you.”_

“—hasn’t been satisfied, but I’m not too sure if he’s done yet or not. This took… meticulous planning. Something that he could do day-to-day and perhaps even just wait out for. We can’t be too sure, but FRIDAY was trying to follow his progress and there are too many holes we can’t account for that I’m not too keen on finding out.”

Tony already knows that Rhodey doesn’t think that Zemo has anything except a hard-on for making Tony suffer, and the face-to-face is just a final tease. The council had warned him, after Tony rejected the request, that Zemo’s quest was so focused that on top of his military experience, there was a sort of single-minded research that revealed HYDRA strongholds that hadn’t been touched in years, sometimes decades.

FRIDAY was having trouble listing out the order in which Zemo had found them. The timeline to his revenge was sketchy at best and there seemed no traces of the information gathering Zemo had done to get _there_ , Siberia, December 16th, 1991.

All they had left of Zemo’s motivation’s were recordings T’Challa had given the Council. _Vengeance has consumed you. It is consuming them. I am done letting it consume me. Justice will come soon enough. **Tell that to the dead.**_

“If _anything_ happens,” Tony says, “you let me know immediately. Viz, I’m expecting updates, sir, because we may be able to do something so for now I’m not touching anything related to them.” No one mentions that Tony hasn’t actually said their names the entire conversation long. Tony feels his infinite love for these two incomparable beings grow slightly. “Before you go, though, I’m going to fix whatever god-awful sound your braces are making, and we’re going to look at your current gauntlet watches that _yes you are taking with you no matter how much you hate silver, okay_ , I can make them gunmetal but that’s only because you. Are. Taking them. Capiche?”

Rhodey snorts, raising an eyebrow as he turns to Vision with a _face_ that just says _get a look at this guy_. “Look man, if it’ll make you feel better then I’m all game, but your shaggy lookin’ ass is going to have to get some rest before we start looking—”

“—it needs to be soon, though, because you guys need to be leaving in the morning, and someone needs to give Foster a heads up or Darcy is going to have some fun tazing people, and I need to catch up with the Spiderling before Queens gets under attack by another weird animal, like a python princess or a porcupine or something. And that’s by tonight,” Tony says, low and rushed. “So meet me in the lab maybe... twenty minutes?”

Rhodey examine’s his friend’s face, the worn sweater. The slight tremble in his arm.

“Twenty minutes, then. I’ll call Foster to let her know to expect us, it’s, what, eleven over there? If she’s anything like any other scientist I know, she’ll be up and running still.”

 

In London, Jane Foster is examining a tablet with a world map. A reconfigured wireless router is connected to the tablet by three wires attached to the exposed back. The first green ping appears all at once, turning yellow, then red over a mass of land in the Wester Hemisphere. Zooming in, Jane’s eyebrows start scrunching together as she writes the coordinates on a curled, unsticky Post-It.

She sneezes—once, twice, three times.

Darcy slams her hands on the coffee table covered in sticky notes and wires. Her hair is a tangled, poofed-up mess on one side where she kept grabbing with her free hand. “I am _not_ A **_GODDAMN_** ENGINEER, and if SOMEONE _sneezes_ ONE _MORE **TIME** _ I swear to THOR I AM GOING TO TAKE A BATH IN BENYLIN!”

Jane rolls her eyes and reaches for the sticky note she just wrote on. “Darcy, we’re not sick—”

(“Tell that to Selvig, that snot-monster” Darcy mumbles rubbing her eyes.)

“—just, look up these coordinates for me, yeah?” Darcy looks up at the yellow square Jane holds up and starts tapping away at her phone. “Let me know what you get, we may need to re-do some of the wiring.”

“I got… hmm…local business…yadda yadda—ah! There: Shady Acres Care Home.”

Hm. For a device meant to ping out Asgardian presences, that didn’t bode well. “Yeah,” Jane says, sticking the post it among the pile on the table, “that can’t be right. I guess we’ll try again later.” In the kitchen, next to a leaning tower of dirty bowls, her phone began to chime and vibrate around the counter.

**Wakandan Royal Palace, Wakanda**

The night paints a different but still beautiful picture of Wakanda. The stars that set the night sky ablaze bring a fierce parallel to the blend of technology and nature of the country. Everyone gives some remark when they pass through the barrier, and Steve had almost forgotten just how striking the city looked and took a moment, too, to let his gaze follow the lights of the nightlife shine against the sky, gleam against the leaves.

He was so tired. A kind of soul-deep weariness that forced his eyes to turn from the spectacular sights of the futuristic city, the thought _Howard was all wrong; the future is not all sleek and shiny and new. It’s a blend of what is and what can be—_

Like the past and the future in one. Tradition with technology. A balance.

 _Something you could only dream of, but hey,_ Tony’s voice whispers in Steve’s mind, _what do I know. I’m only a futurist. What are you again?_

Past and the future. Steve told Tony, _together_ , and then ran off on a mission of his own. The past and the future. Somewhere there’s a whisper of a memory, of Steve standing with the ruins of Tony’s betrayal, promising _together_. 

There are four guards and two people waiting at the landing pad, and although Steve recognizes T’Challa’s form, he notes that Shuri is not the one with him but another young woman. As the Quinjet lands, Steve takes the moment everyone starts to rush their exit to take a breath for himself, steel his shoulders and raise his chin.

 _Like a good little soldier,_ Tony snorts, _another mask, another persona. Do you even know how to just be Steve Rogers anymore?_

“King T’Challa,” Steve says as he catches up to the awed teammates gathered in front of the king, just outside of the landing ramp. “Thank you for receiving us, and for receiving me once more. It was quite our luck when you pinged us.” Steve dips his head once, respectfully.

Sam bows, and T’Challa and his companion snort at. The others, too, look wryly at the man.

“It seemed like fortuitous timing that we noted the Quinjet was once again flying from her perch,” T’Challa says, “Nakia is a member of our esteemed River Tribe and the Head of the Social Outreach Department.” Nakia nods at T’Challa as he speaks, the shell necklace on her neck rustling slightly.

“We were just planning on retiring for the night when the alert came through,” Nakia continues, “you all must be tired and in need of good food and good rest. Go, and tomorrow, we will speak on important manners.”

“Like what?” Scott asks, slightly hesitant. Nakia turns to him but it is T’Challa that speaks up instead.

“We will leave that for tomorrow. As it is, we are very exhausted, and you all look the way you smell.” T’Challa throws one last grin before turning, expecting them to all follow. “Tomorrow will come, everyone. Please, rest at least for now.”

Steve doesn’t ask about Bucky. As it is, he understands that Shuri is doing her best, and if Buck really wanted to reach out it would be incredibly simple with the remote bracelet she’d given him.

It still feels a little like getting left behind, though. He follows T’Challa and Nakia mindlessly, missing the awed expressions of those around him.

 _You wouldn’t feel left behind_ , Tony tsks in Steve’s mind, _if you would bother keeping up, for once._

By the time Steve has come to, he is alone in a hallway looking down at the passage of doors.

**San Francisco, California. Private road: an alleyway with “ONE WAY” passage.**

She feels a buzz on her skin before she realizes the other presence nearby. Like eyes watching her, following the slow rise and fall of her supposedly sleeping form. Natasha tries to catalog the information she can gleam from the figure while not actively observing.

Light steps. Sneaking. Short figure. More compact, a subtle heaviness through muscle mass. Some kind of armory, judging by the not-natural sound of their clothes as the person came closer to inspect her.

She could smell a faint tinge of body odor, just a taste of sweat. Working out, maybe. A passing jogger. Someone doing yoga from their apparent, perhaps.

Then, almost, the sound of… wings? Natasha looks up quickly, unfurling from where she was curled around her bag, sleeping.

No one else was in the alley.

**Upstate, New York: Avengers Compound.**

Tony feels a little more than human when he finally returns to the basement workshop. He’d managed to wash off without wetting or irritating his chest and changed into warmer clothes before finally relenting and returning. Rhodey is already there, talking to Friday with three wrist watches projected next to him.

Tony doesn’t say anything as he approaches, much to Rhodey’s displeasure, and still doesn’t speak as he maneuver’s the other man to sit on a bench a few feet behind where he was standing.

“FRIDAY says that rendering will take a minute,” Rhodey says at last, “because you have her mostly… looking at old SHIELD dump files you pulled?”

Tony hums, pulling out a pin at the knee-socket.

“Want to share with the class _why_ you’re sifting through all those files?” Rhodey continues blandly, looking up at the three projections FRIDAY has shifted forward once more. “Do you think there will be traces of Zemo’s methodology in there somewhere?”

“…nah,” Tony says at least, putting the pin between his lips to shift another fragment of the brace. “I juss wunna no wha ails iss au-dere.” He slots the pin back into a different slot. “All of this information was just…. Out there. And Zemo may have had a single-minded purpose to find whatever he needed, but he is not the only one.”

Rhodey doesn’t respond but selects a watch that suits his tastes.

“Is that why you have an ever-growing list of information on… Scott Lang and the Pyms-Van Dynes? Because no offence, but that doesn’t fall in line at all with what you’re saying.”

Tony shrugs. “I like to know my wildcards. I hadn’t expected them to go fugitive instead of just… leaving Scott out to hang. I didn’t do my research well enough, I guess.”

“Maybe there is just more to what people do than standard patterns and common sense,” Rhodey muses, “after all, no one would have expected what—"

 _What would have happened that day,_ is what Rhodey was going to say, but stopped. He let out a deep breath as it hit him all at once.

“You want to understand why… why Lang just came. Why the same guy that robbed the facility and made Sam look like an idiot would just pop into your suit and try to take you down.”

“Are you asking me or…?”

“Tony,” Rhodey sighs, shifting to ease some of the pressure off the upper part of his thigh, “the guy was a fanboy through and through. Cap told him to come and the idiot just left. You heard the ex-wife, just popped up in the middle of dinner and booked it. You don’t need to parse through the information to understand _that_.”

“No,” Tony agreed, “but this is also the same guy that brought VistaCorp and Zorick’s shady deals into the light would be the kind of guy to turn away from the elected voices of all the little people, you know.”

“Sure,” Rhodey concedes, “but he’s also the guy with a degree in electrical engineering that figured pulling on random wires in your suit was a good idea and not borderline homicidal so.”

Tony snorts and Rhodey feels his breathing get a little lighter. It had been tough holding the fort, keeping Vision busy, Ross busy, Pepper focused, and trying to focus on his own physical therapy while ignoring how he woke up from nightmares in cold sweat and the swoop in his stomach of _falling._ But this… the morbid teasing, speaking Tony’s language, it felt good.

“Look,” Tony starts, and Rhodey breathes in softly at the tone, “I’m not saying we all made good choices, because we didn’t—”

“—least we _actually thought ours through_ —"

“Honeybear, _none of us did_. The only blessing we had was that we were more aligned with the law than them. And look at where that lead us.” Tony doesn’t look up from where he is still tweaking the brace. “All of us. Vision is _lost._ I’m a fucking mess, you’re, you… look, I’m not saying that Rogers had a point, but I will say that… maybe if it had been flipped, if it had been you we were looking for… I would have razed everything to the ground and damn anyone that tried to get in my way.”

Ah. That, then. Rhodey puts a hand on Tony’s head and bites back a relieved sigh when the other man doesn’t flinch this time.

“I have had the blessing of trying to find my best friend. And in all those weeks we looked for you, Tony, all that time they tried to tell me that it was useless… I held onto hope. I held onto the idea that, whole or not, _I would find you._ But I wouldn’t burn the world to find you. I would deft the military, I would defy the powers that be, but I would never put others in danger because _neither would you._

“It’s nice to think that you’d do the same but you’re just tricking yourself into thinking that, Tones. You’d call Pepper to lead the charge on official channels. You’d have FRIDAY scouring the entire technological world. You would go and personally investigate any leads. Happy probably wouldn’t let anyone out of his sight and would demand for check ins.

“I get that you want to understand what’s going on, why St-Rogers chose he path he did.” Rhodey taps on Tony’s forehead, getting the other man’s attention. Tony puts down the small metal bits in his hands and looks up at Rhodey from his crouch between his legs. “But you flew a nuke into space because you knew It was the only way. You went out alone and destroyed all those weapons Stane was selling under the table. Understand this, _you would have found a way_.”

They stay there, staring at each other for what feels like a lifetime before Tony clicks another piece back into the brace and Rhodey feels the pinching on the side of his leg slowly fade away.

“Your watch will be ready upstairs,” Tony finally says, “I’ll make sure Vision takes it to the hangar to you. I suggest giving your legs a break for now and taking the wheel chair for at least a few hours.”

 

When Rhodey is gone and Tony has moved to take his seat on the bench, he doesn’t speak, had only said goodbye when the two left a few minutes before. Tony simply went back to his workshop, sat on the bench and stared at his hands with Rhodey’s words ghosting over him.

_You would have found a way_

But when it came time, when he pulled off Rhodey’s faceplate, after he’d hit Falcon with a repulsor blast— _not strong enough to damage, only enough to knock him on his ass_ —god, he’d hit Falcon with a repulsor blast, and it was only the grace of armor he had made that protected the other man. When it came down to it— _wait, I know that road—_ he couldn’t hear anything except for Howard— _you are my greatest creation—_ Howard— _you know, they say sarcasm is a metric for potential. If that’s true, you’ll be a great man some day. I’ll get the bags—_

Howard— _Help my wife. Please. Help her. Sergeant Barnes—_

He’d fought them. Had turned and smacked Steve across he face, taken Barnes and… but he’d tried to stop Steve. And—Steve, with three punches, had disabled his flight ability, had chosen Barnes—

Not chosen. It was always Barnes. Had decided that taking Tony down was easier than…

Than letting him kill his friend?

Tony knew the destructive capacity he could unleash. Had he really wanted Bares dead? Could he really see his fury reflected on Steve’s face when he lowered the shied, when they’d both gouged at tge reactor on his chest and beat him between the two of them?

Barnes had been digging his hand into the arc reactor, other hand grinding his face into the wall and all Tony could see was—

_Wake up, dear. Howard. Howard! Help!_

That same metal arm and the snow and the cold and—

Tony wraps his arms around himself, and doesn’t listen as FRIDAY raises the temperature in the room, reminds him to call Pepper, Spider-Man, reminds him of the growing folders on his server. Ant-Man. The Pym-Van Dynes. SHIELD Dump folders. Peter’s updates. Amendments to the Accords. A list of the things the UN and the US are prodding for. A message from T’Challa.

Tony holds himself together until the cold recedes, thinking that maybe Rhodey was wrong. He’d chosen a way, this way, and maybe it wasn’t the right path in the end. Sitting alone in his workshop, trying to will himself to breath. The nanites in his chest would swarm out and back in according to his heartbeats. There was no control here.

There, on the counter of his workshop table, a letter. In the pocket of his sweats, a phone he would never use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i quit my job, left the wildfire in Nor Cal, moved twice, and finally had time to finish and post this chapter. Sorry for the long hiatus, y'all!
> 
> Still no beta. Sorry!

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot to mention that I'm not going to moderate comments unless I have to. The way I see it, Captain America: Civil War framed both Steve and Tony as both heroes and villains to both camps, but the characterization of everyone involved was atrocious so there's going to be a bit of... thinking and self-reflection a lot in order to get everyone united and moving forward.


End file.
